I frowned at my own abrupt conclusion. What had I seen to form such an assumption? He’d defended a Chasseur from open criticism. He’d grown his parish. Both should’ve been admirable behaviors, biblical ones, but they weren’t. They weren’t, and I didn’t understand—not him, not the Church, not this growing heat in my chest or this pricking sensation along my skin. Like it’d grown several sizes too small.

“You are forgiven, child,” he said, despite Philippe’s gray-streaked beard. “All is forgiven in pursuit of our noble cause. The Father knows your heart. In violence against these creatures, he compels your hand.”

Gaspard ambled down the steps toward Philippe. Slowly. Almost leisurely. Sleek and proud and superior. Father Achille might’ve rolled his eyes. Regardless, he hobbled down his own stairs, following Gaspard’s lead across the chamber. The two met on either side of the podium. Of my mother.

Achille stepped in front of her. His robes shielded her comatose body. “He never compels our hands to violence.”

“Stand down, old man.” Though murmured, Gaspard’s voice still reverberated through the quiet room. One could’ve heard a pin drop. “We are here to burn the witch, not coddle it.”

My cheeks flushed with anger, with inexplicable hurt. But I shouldn’t have been agitated, I shouldn’t have been hurt, and I definitely shouldn’t have felt concern for the witch below. As with Célie and Gaspard, however, I couldn’t explain my own decisions.

I didn’t love her anymore.

I didn’t like Father Gaspard.

And I didn’t want my mother—a witch—to suffer. I didn’t want her to burn.

Sick shame washed through me at the last, and I sank onto the nearest bench. Desperate to regain my composure. When Lou followed, touching a hand to my back, I forced myself to count to three, to five, to ten. Anything to focus my turbulent thoughts. I knew what I should do. I pictured it clearly—unsheathing my knife to lop off her hand. To plunge it into her heart.

Equally clear, I pulled her close and buried my nose in her neck. I tasted her scar. I spread her legs across my lap, and I touched her gently, touched her not gently, touched her any way she wanted. When her lips parted, I stole my name from them, and I kept it forever—not a scream of pain, but a cry of longing.

This is how you touch a woman. This is how you touch me.

Pain cleaved my skull in two at the stark imagery, and I pitched forward, seizing my head. Expelling the hateful words. The hateful voice. As they scattered and drifted, the pain receded, but my shame fanned hotter than before. Intolerable. I moved to fling her hand away from me. I stopped at the last moment.

When she leaned over my shoulder, her hair tickled my cheek. “Reid?”